Total Party Kills - Why You Should Allow Them & How To Handle it When it Happens
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ต.ค. 2024
- In this video, I look at the question of TPKs - Total Party Kills - in Dungeons and Dragons and other TTRPG's. Why is a TPK good? How can you prevent a TPK from happening? What do you do after a TPK? Is it anyone's fault? D&D provides many opportunities for it to happen, we just need to know how to make the most of it!
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*Thanks for watching!* Let us know in the comments below your experiences of a TPK in your TTRPGs, whether as the GM or as a player.
Sorry but no. This video has lost me as a viewer. This is NOT Great GM advice.
TPK can happen - but are often just a GM not knowing how to prevent them without having boring Enconters.
There are a lot of Tricks a GM can do to prevent them and manage them.
But, on the "Dream" I disagree - Dreams are good for "GM Hints" and such, but not for that. A God coming down ressurecting them in exchange for "physical Services" is more satisfying and less awkward.
If your Players realize when you "rescue" them, you failed as GM because of that, not because of the TPK.
Encounters should be 50/50 when both sides "just Roll". Any "Trickery" should feel good for the Players - and counterbalanced by the GM with some also tricky Moves on the Opponents side. I had this Bard-like BBEG who was based on the Joker - and he had 3 Gnome Sorcerer teleporting in in a Conga-line and go "FIREBALL" around all 3 seconds while Mistystep around for some Time and then Teleport out again. So, from originally 3x3 Fireballs I made em do a "YaaaaY!" in the Middle and replaced a Fireball-Salvo with some Magical Fireworks cheering the Boss, granting him 3 Times Inspiration.
Also, the Players had the chance to charm that Group and pull em on their Side - what noone did.
So, they're 3 Fireballs short on the Enemys Life and desperatly searching for some hint.
Originally, the Traps laid out were well concealed, but I let one Player trip over them - hidden Barrels with explosive Oil the BBEG planned to detonate magically when the Players came too close. So, I let the Players note them and use them against the Boss with "dispell Magic", which Wizzard took instead of Counterspell, mixing them both up.
That Way, they also got rid of the 3 Sorcs as "colletaral".
Now, they were far in the positives for Winning, so I just let the BBEG throw some "Stunning Cloud Grenades" and in the Rounds none of them could Act he just started mocking them, walking over and tormenting them. He took one Eye, one Ear, one Tusk and one Nose; one after one. Players went ballistic about that, and I could distribute in this "combat Pause" the Damage and such as needed.
Now, one Round before they could move again, he smiles and Chain Lightning them full Palpatine Style until they finish him off.
I may add that I do not say "He does Spell XY" instead of just describing what happens - so, if you want to interact (Counterspell f.E. or the simple Kick to the Groin), do it then when I describe it. And yes, I encourage Players to interrupt me - as long as it is not interrupting the Gameflow itself. That Way, I have the "Timeflow" in my Hands and can do "fast sequences" as well as the "MaxPayne-Focustime".
Also, this Way lets you alter the Sources of Damage or such without harming the Balance of the Crunch.
Like the Volley of 30 Arrows incoming on our Rogue (Groupaction, AoE-Effect. He did it on purpose to distract them and give the Party Time to cross the open Field. So, he used "Evasion" and that rolled - unsuccesful and hidden to all than me (still, he rolled it!) - his Throw for it. I could have describe how he gets nailed, but I choose that one:
As the black Wall of Arrows comes close, you hear the whizzing Sound of their Feathers in the Wins - and your Reflexes kick in. The Arrows come towards you, 40 Meters, 20 Meters, 10 meters....5.....and you srat see the single Arrows in the Pattern. You start moving, but, as you are used to it but still cursing the inconvinience of it, your Body feels slow and heavy. 2 Meters and you turn right, the first two Arros pass by and a high piched Wizz is to hear. you duck a bit, a Third pass your Head, brushing through your Hair as you lift your right foot to evade the Arrow slamming with a "Thud" into the Ground. with the left, you jump up, accelerating and turning in the Air whils 3 - 4 - 7 -9 Arrows pass past you. The Sound of multiple Arrows hitting the Ground appears, but for you it is the Rhythm to dance by. Your Body turns, and you land again, your legs deaccelerating your Body as you land, like Springs eating up the Force you moved with - and the first little numbness sets in. You see the next 4 Arrows, but with a cocky turning of your Head, your long elven Hair flowing around, you evade them seemingly with a simple move of your head. Then, you realize that one Arrow that was left - and you need to pull in your belly, forming a sudden Question Mark with your Body for it to - sucessfully - pass by instead of jamming itself right in your Liver - for the Price of you feeling some more Muscles snap inside your Body due to tis extreme Strain you put on them. You suffer 34 Damage due to this.
But, far in the distance you hear the Enemy Commanders furious Voice scolding his Archers for missing you.while you see your Party darting into the next Cover unseen. Time to get out and follow them.
Using this, you have so much freedom for compensatig good and bad Rolls on all sides, compensate pure Idiocy and such, TPK will be more of a concious, consentual decision rather than some "mistake". The only Circumstance a Char should "just Die" is when all involved just act horrendous stupidly. I can not tell how often I got some Players "saved for Interrogation by the BBEG" and such. And no, I am not a "nice GM" - I am the Guy who is known for his capability of displaying extreme cruelty whilst keeping fair.
Last Thing I GMd my Party got 3 Times a "Death" which forced them to Retreat and later on attack from an other Vector with heightened Security until they were partly succesful (Shadowrun). The Money they made were eaten up mostly for Preperation (2 more as planned) and the Medical bill. They bareley made any money when it would not have been for them to "grab some Paydata on the Way as well" - so, it went like I planned it.
Funny how you do not suggest fudging the dice or revealing to the players how you did fudge the damage dice show them a behind the screen point of view. I also dont think you explained why you should keep tpks in your game. Let us say for example the game is dnd and the players decide to fight a dragon when all they had to do was retrieve something from its horde and the dragon breathes fire you say the damage is 36 show them the damage actually was 56 they survive and run away after retrieving the item when you remind them that was their goal. Well didnt i avoid the tpk and still get my point across?
As a player, and insane as this sounds, I actualy like a TPK from time to time. Does it suck when it happens? Sure. But I much much rather see my character die, than GM taking it easy on me. Sounds patronizing and I don't like it - there are even some GM's that fudge dice to avoid it .... and that sucks. I know GM's (normal GM's atleast) hate TPK's and deaths in general, as it screws up with the campaign they worked on. And I understand - but a dream sequence out of nowhere is too much IMO. Maybe if it is sudden and short and planned (like in Final Destination movies where it only takes first 5 min of the movie and it is only a way to set it up), then it COULD work.
What my point is - I like a failure to be an option - and I want to believe a GM will see it through, if TPK occurs, and not pussyfoot arround it (pardon the language). And that includes "meaningless" deaths aswell ... D&D world can be a dangerous place - and if my character falls of his horse and dies ... well ... that's part of the "realism". This is the game afterall and not a book - so death must be present or I just get borred hornestly.
EDIT: I must stress tho - that I don't like a game with a lot of random encounters or meaningless checks. Example: We established my character can jump over 2m gap ... so there should be no checks when I'm jumping over 1m chasm....my guy can do that automaticaly (despite that, strictly by the rules I would die if I roll double 1's). If the distance is 1.8m ... or maybe 2.2m or distance is unknown or there are other factors - like weather or my character is wounded... then yes check is defenitley in order ... and if I fall and die ... I die.
@@davidmoseley1082 Do not lie to your players. An NPC can lie to your players characters in the story but when YOU lie about the dice it is YOU lying to your players. Would you be ok if your players lied about their dice rolls to you? Do not think so. I roll in the open for everything that would be perceptible by people, combat rolls, saves, ability checks that are not mental etc. The things rolled out of sight are things you could not perceive with your senses. You make a deception check and my NPC makes an insight check against it then it will be rolled out of sight because you would have no idea if your deception worked or not till the NPC's actions make the outcome perceptible.
As to why TPK should be kept in the game that is simple.
1. Players learn things from TPK's. They learn their limits and they learn strategy and tactics. If you never die why improve your tactical play and do better?
2. It provides stakes to the action. If you will not kill the party then there are no stakes. You might as well just take the rolling of combat out and just role play the combat entirely descriptively with the party always being victorious. At that point you have taken the "Game" part out of Role Playing Game.
3. TPK's can be great story opportunities for later campaigns. My best example. In my campaigns I run them in my own world co created by me and my brother. Plenty of places in the game world have ended up named for former characters and parties and their failures and successes over the 30+ years the world has been going. Had a newer player ask about an area close to where the party was named Feldrin's Folly. The place was renamed after an adventuring party all died there. The player who played Feldrin in a campaign 2 decades before was at the table and so I asked hm to tell the story about the tragic end of the party Feldrin was the leader of. Was a wonderful hour of storytelling that ensued.
4. A lot of players will not like a campaign they feel does not challenge them. A campaign where a DM is totally against TPK's and will not do them is pretty obvious and will alienate those players and they will leave. I know I would not play in a campaign where TPK's are not possible due to the DM coddling us players.
One of my characters was doing a spooky divination wizard. At the start of the campaign I gave him the gift of prophecy from his god. We were doing a harder campaign then I normally run. Basically he had 1 charge where he could rewind up to 24 hours, that part of the session being a vivid dream of events to come.
None of the other characters knew about it, so when he shouted "NO!" as the 3rd PC fell and everyone was clearly feeling super stressed they got a nice surprise of the Wizard waking up and telling them their fate, enough to change it and win. They loved it and they enjoyed the reveal that this spooky character had it the whole time and sacrificed it for his friends.
That's a fun idea. Super memorable.
That is very clever
🤔 not bad
Cool! 😃
This is actually super cool. Was there a cost to this gift or was it freely given?
Free idea for post-TPK adventure: all of the characters end up in the same afterlife, despite their varying faiths/alignments. Turns out there's some kind of aberration which has corrupted whatever mechanism sorts souls into the correct afterlife, and the local psychopomp is willing to give you free tickets back to the prime Material of you deal with it.
I was thinking more like the enemies start hitting for non-lethal and it becomes an escape. I have some slaver organizations in a world I setup. No guarantees that the slavers will be what the players encounter, but if they do they will only attempt to knock out the players. Key is of course they should notice before the TPK that their enemies are actively trying to avoid killing them in favor of knocking them out.
Isn't this what Guy talked about, in some fashion at least?!
This remembers me together again
As long as the DM's girlfriend isn't running a group for the first time and has a giant Owl Bear in the afterlife that expects all of the players to have sex with each other to get back to their lives. Ya, it was a thing.
@@TheMindBullets well, that's... What? I would absolutely have broken character and refused to keep playing in that situation. I hope no one got severely traumatized.
if you make it a dream sequence, end your session, review what they did and make subtle changes to what they are going to encounter. With the right tweaks / circumstances it might be possible for the PCs to believe it was some form of divine foreshadowing. E.g. The temple they entered was in perfect condition. Next time they arrive at it, its clearly been a ruin for a thousand years (so clearly they were in a dream before, that now *makes sense*). Do they remember the inscription above the door that has now faded beyond recognition? Don't make it a straight "redo".
Dragons of Dreams had hints of this, playing the same encounters over and over, some PCs dying, then mysteriously being alive again a moment later, then all of them showing up to the throne room at once. God, it was great.
We had the "it was a dream" situation once, but we were all in a pretty dark place IRL at that moment (for reasons related to the situation in our country, not sure I want to go into details) and we just wanted to have it, logically or not.
Alexa. Play “Hokage’s Funeral”
*-plays broken flute-*
I've only been in one truly near-TPK that I feel blame on an individual player was justified. A player in the party had repeatedly gotten bored of their characters and swapped, and the GM told them the last time they asked that the character would need to die if they wanted to change again. What happened next session was that we were going into a high-level enemy fortress through an obviously trapped backdoor. The rogue walked up and was about to start disabling the traps when this player stated that they charged the door, setting off all of the traps on the door before anyone had time to back away and only two characters had survived the dozen lightning runes. The GM promptly stopped the session, kicked the player out of the group (this was an online D&D group) and after about 30 minutes had it so that a divine favor was given to the healers who had happened to be the survivors with enough resurrects to bring the party back. This was a campaign that had gone on for 2 and a half years at that point if I remember correctly, so no one was wanting to start over because one person decided to ruin everyone's fun.
At that point you just retcon the previous 5 minutes and go back to "rogue is disabling traps." No need for literal divine intervention in the narrative.
@@NessOnett8 having divine intervention justified the sudden disappearance of the character. Otherwise they would need some way to remove the character. Easy solution, Deus ex machina.
Honestly a decent amount of this falls on the dm for not just letting the player switch out their character. Obviously the player is a selfish asshole for doing that and should have sought other means but it's also kind of a dick move on the dm's part to pigeonhole them into a character that they didn't want to play
@@wilhelmkreis6578 Its entirely the fault of the player. If anything, the DM was too nice in allowing the player to change more than once. Allwoing a player to do that creates a ton of extra work and disrupts the narrative, party dynamic, party and encounter balance, ect. Why should the Dm have to deal with a player who constantly changes characters and forces the DM to do extra work coming up with narrative reasons to remove a character and introduce a new one, rebalancing encounters, ect, just because some idiot couldn't make up his mind about what he wanted to play and stick with it. This kind of shit effects not only the DM, but other player too, who might have picked their classes and abilities based on what other people were doing to balance the party. The DM was perfectly justified in not letting him switch again without dying. Honestly, that DM must have been a saint because the majority I know would have kicked a player that disruptive and self-centred out way sooner, including myself.
@@Dadpai I think it's fine to weave between characters as long as you do it gracefully.
recently our gm did a one off for a friends bachelor party, where we were not playing the characters in our normal campaign. we went full murder hobo and we were slaughtered like animals - it was a good way for the gm to show new players that he wont protect from your own stupidity forever. then when we went back to our normal campaign in the next session, everyone was a bit more cautious as they were playing characters near and dear to their hearts
I laughed at your dream sequence segment. I did exactly that in my last campaign. (We were learning a new system and hadn't figured out the balance yet.) I laughed harder when you said that you should only do that once every ten years. That was exactly how long that campaign lasted! Good to know that I'm good for another dream sequence. ;)
GM, "Right, so you've all been slain by the Valley Ogres... Roll up Ogre characters."
I am a fairly inexperienced DM, I've started a handful of campaigns before but never finished them before the group disbands due to real life interfering. I started my current game about a year ago with two friends who had never played before. The plan was to give them some easy combat as a sort of tutorial that also thrusts them into the story: the two characters would meet on the road, moments before a third traveler with a blue cap yells for help while being attacked by wolves. What followed was a mix between the players being inexperienced, me overestimating their abilities by having too many wolves, and really, REALLY, bad dice rolls. It was a TPK in the first 10 minutes of their first ever D&D game.
So, I called a quick break and tried to think of how to salvage the situation, and hatched a plan. When we resumed, I started with one of the characters waking from a dream, shortly before meeting the other player she recognized from her dream, and who she witnessed die to some wolves, but he had no idea who she was (to this day she still hasn't told him about the dream yet either). They went to a town, dealt with some punk kids, accepted a job to run an errand to a lumber mill, etc. However on the way to the mill, they heard a voice calling for help. They round a bend and see the same traveler with the blue cap being attacked by wolves. This time though, there were less wolves than the dream; the alpha is missing from the scene. Having a better grasp of what to do, and with better dice rolls, they bested the wolves and saved the blue capped man. He looked at them, thanked them by name, and the session ended.
Now, originally this traveler was a minor quest giver to direct the players to a nearby farm, but after the TPK I completely dropped the old adventure hooks I had in mind and ran with this. The traveler is now some mysterious wandering wizard, possibly even an avatar of some celestial being, who warns them of dark times approaching. The alpha wolf has yet to appear again, but the seed is there for the secret villain of this arc to be a creature that appears as a shadow wolf corrupting the forest (still ironing out the details for the final encounter), that will have been 'foretold' from session 1.
So far so good, the 'it was all a dream' approach worked well this time around.
Reminds me of a story I'm working on, where a group of adventurers help a mysterious Druid in exchange for ancient wisdom. She teaches them by forcibly putting them to sleep and running them through the same scenario over and over, ending in a different, and entirely unforeseen, TPK every time, seemingly no matter what they do. It's like she's a really bad GM or something, I guess.
Whenever someone says "total TPK", I can't help but be reminded some people still say "ATM machine".
RIP in peace is another one that comes to mind
PIN number
HIV Virus
Those types of mistakes give me headaches. Gotta need a cup of chai tea to process this.
Next time my players TPK I'm going to use dream sequence. Than when they 'win' on the next go round, say 'now you wake up'. Groundhogs day them with an unknown enemy trapping then in a dream sequence
I think if you're doing a dream sequence from the get go, give a couple of hints associated with dreams: describe numbers blurry, besmirched out generally hard to read, have one (maybe old and generally confused) NPC have a complete non sequitur in the middle of the conversation or just something akin to that Matrix scene with the two cats déjà vú.
Make the players uncomfortable and then give them some relief - at least until one of them gets the idea to wonder why the hell that thing just happened.
@@adahnliegl740 My understanding of the idea is this is Etrigan's clever way of hiding the dream contingency to save the party from the TPK as if it were planned sequence. A very clever idea, I must say.
Don't overdo the dream sequence thing though, it'll actually piss off your players, once or twice is friggin hilarious though. I did this once, had them all 'wake up' to their city under attack by flaming hot skinned winged beasts with riders just laying hell to the place, they were slinging spells and using resources and doing everything they could to stave off the assault, when it looked grim one the creatures let out an ear piercing screech that jolted the entire party from their sleep, they all woke up in a cold sweat, still tired feeling unrested, when they got outside the rest of the townfolk looked pretty shaken and tired. The players hated the whole "it was just a dream" but at the same time they told me they loved it as it was part of the story of the world we were playing in. I have to admit, hearing "I freaking hate you so much right now" was pretty satisfying cause they were quite literally on the edge of their chairs for the 'encounter'. They spent the rest of the session researching how that could happen to a whole town and learned things were getting serious since the BBEG had access to people that could walk and modify dreams
"I mean, we've all watched Game of Thrones final season, right?"
Nope! To this day I haven't seen any of Game of Thrones. And I don't intend to start.
Same here.
Keep it up, warrior
There was actually some good stuff in the first few episodes or so... I was actually hopeful they may have reversed the decline in quality. Then they flushed it all down the drain...
The books are pretty good 👉👈
Highly recommend the books ^^
I have honestly never experienced a TPK. As a player I have gotten close a couple of times. Most often, it was the epic final battle, which made it a blast. There was that chance that we could actually lose. As a GM, my campaigns are more often role-play heavy and players are allowed some independence of action, so TPK opportunities are actually rare.
That said, in my last session, my players entered a cave that kept getting warmer, and then they realized they were at the base of a volcano. Immediately, one of them said, "We're walking into a TPK!" and they fled the cave. No monsters, no lava flows, no immediate threat, they just ran. We ended the session with the players warily returning to investigate. The irony is that, unless they make a massive number of stupid mistakes, like jumping into the lava, there is no way a TPK will happen. The fact that it is a volcano has no real relationship to the actual plot. It made me laugh my ass off, especially as the closest they have gotten to a TPK so far was almost accidentally blowing up their own ship.
I ran a game for 5 new players and TPKed them last week. It was an unfortunate but very deserved outcome to the Lost Mines of Phandelver. They had failed to succeed at anything and cause a lot of havoc. They didn't deal with any of the bosses (Klarg, Iarno, etc) and they burned down some of the houses in the town (not entirely by accident either). In the end, after 6 sessions and getting no closer to any goals, I had to decide that the enemy forces regrouped and planned an ambush. During that, their luck was aboslutely awful - 4 skeletons, 1 nothic and Iarno the mage were able to take the five 3rd level characters out without taking any casualties (the party didn't even kill one skeleton - that's how rotten their luck was).
Oh, in the end they had great fun and agreed that their characters were hopelessly lost and poorly motivated. Got lots of messages saying it was great fun and hope to get completely wrecked again in the next game.
they tought they were playing GTA haha
One of my favorites is the party being revived by a shady necromancer to which they now owe a great debt. Or, if it's a pirate campaign, let the players respawn in Davey Jones' Locker from which they have to escape (Pirates of the Caribbean style )
Wait when did GoT have a final season? I thought they just left off on a cliffhanger and for some reason definitely decided not to finish it.
I've only backtracked once, although not a TPK although it nearly was and half the party died, now if it had been the players fault via their decision making or just the fate of the Dice then i would have stood by what happened, but a couple of hours after the session I was re-reading through my notes and the campaign stuff and noticed that I'd ran the encounter wrong and as a result it was far harder than it was supposed to be, so it wasn't their mistake it was my own and it wasn't just a regular death it was a proper disintigration so it wasn't a job for Revivify or anything they had at their level, so accepting my own mistake, I worked it into the story and gave them a way of bringing the characters back through the help of an important NPC the party was already looking for. Ironically enough the same party did meet it's ultimate end via TPK when through their own actions they got bored of trying to figure out a puzzle and instead decided to just trigger the trap and deal with the results, the result was a surprise Beholder and their subsequent deaths.
I used the "You are now in the underworld and have to escape to regain your lives" in a Theros campaign to great effect. It was very fun and reinforced the feel of the setting (Greek mythology).
This could be done with any kind campaign really. In a more generic setting you can a devil or powerful fey swipe up their souls and then the characters gotta get out of hell or this beings realm.
My campaign is actually starting like that. Each person was a level 3 pirate that was doing his own thing when somehow or another they were killed in unheroic ways, and so they were sent to purgatory which takes the form of ships traveling on the river Styx. They then have to escape and regain their lives
We nearly had a TPK in the Descent into Avernus campaign in playing in last week. Thanks to Lulu the Hollyphant and some amazing dice rolls from the warlock, three of six players survived (I wasn't one of them). Fortunately there was a good opportunity to introduce new characters right around the corner. We certainly learned some lessons, and I'm looking forward to trying out my new monk.
I literally just did this in a game of starjammer. After an arguement over who should fly the ship, the pilot lost and the gunner took over. Several jumps in and she flew them into a radiation belt and over the next five days the whole crew died of radiation sickness.
At some point, you gotta let them deal with their shit. So we laughed, said good game and discussed what to play next.
Yes, I remember once I was involved in a TPK caused by a stupid decision made by one of the other characters.
Not much, for the GM, to do to save the situation. Difficult to save characters from committing suicide.
@@larsdahl5528 My mantra and my players know it well: I can save you from the dragon. I can save you from the lich. I cannot and will not save you from yourselves.
Are you a teenager? I'm legitimately curious how the fuck people have enough free time to just flippantly throw their campaigns away like this
@@override367 I'm 35. Tabletop gaming is my hobby. This is what I do with my free time. I have no problem ending a campaign because I enjoy building them and I'm also not so attached to them I will do anything to keep them from ending.
I'm not sure if you were trying to offend me, but I'm insulted that you think I'm immature, flippant, or just plain stupid to let a story conclude without a happy ending every time.
@@ShadowKatt Man, I actually wish I was you. It takes me so much motivation for me to even start writing my campaign and setting. I really like dnd, but actually building settings and preparing for sessions feels like a chore to me instead of something enjoyable. Being able to end a campaign like that would be impossible for me, I have huge respect for you.
Recently I had a player charge in and get 1 shot by a boss, after that battle ensued, only barely alive person left out of the battle was 1 player, who looked quite a heroic in that situation. I think TPKs are ofc a possibility but close death scenarios bind players to their characters.
I think the "Do or die" event used as "Session One" story opening has its value.
It is an early test: Do the characters work as a group?
If they do not, then it is best to detect the problem early, as it is a good reason to start the campaign over, with the character creation getting more focus on the ability to work together.
I had my first TPK ever recently since I starting GMing in 1981.
It was with Alien RPG so it was to be expected.
@Warren Higgins It was player vs player more than the actual Alien.
@@DarranSims That fits right into that universe, too ;) (especially if one of them was an android)
I wouldn't count it if it is EXPECTED! That's like calling the end of Ten Candles a TPK! Ten Candles doesn't end until everyone is dead, or CRAZY!
@@JacksonOwex To be fair I have ran loads of Alien RPG one-shots (30+ games) and only had one TPK.
I'm currently running a Grim Hollow campaign, heavily inspired by the dread and atmosphere of Darkest Dungeon. They players are playing inquisitors working for an organization that fights to protect the world from the horrors around it. Pulling zero punches is the name of the game here, and the players were appropriately warned multiple times before beginning the campaign, and we all agreed to play a dark, dreadful, and most of all, deadly campaign. I'm being absolutely merciless, and if they all die, they all die. Another team of inquisitors will just pick up where they left off. It's pretty satisfying to see them play really smart and do their best to survive the ordeal, we are all loving it so far.
That's incredible! I've always liked the idea of a Darkest Dungeon TTRPG dynamic. It's one of my favorite games of all time, and it would translate beautifully into TTRPGs with the right party. Glad it's going well for you!
Rather than edit my initial comment, I will just add another, as this one is a serious suggestion rather then a toss-off bit of humor:
Never forget the well-used trope of the heroes having somehow wandered into/been trapped by a time loop. In television shows, this sort of plot device is introduced by having everyone die as a result of a seemingly unavoidable catastrophic situation. Then, one of the main characters "wakes up" at some point in the recent past; usually a few hours (or a couple of days at the outside) from the point of the wipe. Other characters are often shown as gaining awareness of the loop one by one after some number of iterations, in others, only the single character is aware and must figure out how to transmit their gained knowledge into the next loop.
The first idea, including the variant where everyone is aware of the loop immediately, is far easier from the role-playing and group participation perspective. But remember, it is most often the case in fiction that with each subsequent failure and "reset" of the loop for "group awareness" situations, the amount of time they have before the SPLAT! (whatever its nature), is continually and successively diminished. Obviously, this only works narratively in certain settings where the DM can constrain PC actions to some degree, because otherwise they can just decide to bugger off Sir Robin style whilst their minstrels mock them mercilessly, and you should have just gone with the "it was all a dream" solution.
Instead, whatever time frame is initially chosen, it should be short enough that all of the elements that lead to the TPK are in play and the forces in motion cannot be avoided easily by simply convincing the group to go the other direction, not open that particular door, don't enter that nebula, etc. It should be long enough, however, that the PCs can explore other avenues of action, and more importantly, discover clues that point them in the correct direction of their single avenue of escape.
You should not necessarily start exponentially shortening the remaining time at first. Instead, you should rather let your inner Evil-DM out for a bit of fun as you again slaughter everyone in the party another time or two in cruel and inventive fashion. But, if the players start becoming more bold and fearless in their own actions in trying to escape this fiendish plot (and they almost certainly will), hopefully at least one of them will realize that a successful escape will almost certainly leave those who died in that last loop thoroughly dead.
This particular possibility of handling a TPK is one that requires both the correct general situation and a small amount of forethought when planning the adventure as to what the nature of the loop is (intentional or accidental), who/what is responsible, and what some possible solutions/avenues of escape might be. You will want more than one of these last considerations, as you don't want to introduce this narrative device only to have your PCs stumble onto the solution on the first go around. Make them sweat it out and feel the stakes a bit by having alternative "correct" solutions up your sleeve!
I am a new DM, been watching most of this series a couple years now and about a year and a half ago I was asked to DM to try my hand. Well, after a couple of sessions of pre-level 1 misadventures (PCs were children) and time skipped to level 1 after things started.
Anyway, I ran an adventure from "Rolled & Tolled" and the normal DM decided to go MurderHobo rather than follow the clues they got. So when the uh went to the manor of the Vampress Baroness they had burned through resources. Got through a tough fight (they should have breezed through had they not fought the village) they then triggered a trap AND pissed off Vampire Spawn.
TPK.
The "normal" DM blamed me and the adventure for being broken. Then COVID happened and that group broke up. One day, I will share full info in a Horror Story or something...
Nope. That's a TPK that should have happened. Most new DM's pull punches and it sounds like the normal DM counted on you doing that.
In my opinion, pulling punches is a mistake (most of the time). BUT, some nights, all monsters crit with every attack so I'll fudge some of those attacks (or if players have a night where they can't roll above a 10 to hit the monsters, I'll have the monsters miss, too) because I find TPK by dice to be REALLY unsatisfying.
@@urdaanglospey6666 By dice/luck is how mine happened, at least the ones I remember!
Important: never think the players got it. They will think in a completely different direction. They interpreted clues differently, do not find them etc.
I mean yeah its not smart to walk into a vampire manor unprepared but still.
It can feel unfair to players
Also relatively new DM here. In my humble opinion you did the right thing. I bet the seasoned DM was just salty that “you let their character die”…
The "seasoned" DM in my group also tpk'd my game but kinda knew he was when he did it and accepted his fate.
(Uncle as old skool dm): Rocks fall, everyone dies.... youve been poisoned, poison used to be an instant death.... trap fall into lava all dead.... bad news the ferry captain was drunk and sinks into the sea....
(My uncle back in the day as Gm): 3 sessions ago, an NPC briefly mentioned the Tavern here, was the most popular for 500 km and alcohol abuse had never been so bad. Having to use perception and discover the captain was inebriated was so clearly telegraphed if you were taking this seriously paying attention...
Do i gotta handhold you guys,
Guess you guys should have brought 15 long poles each into the dungeon, i mean most dungeons, or farmer's field are like 98% instant death traps by area, also the shop had them available, how could ive been more clear!!!
Got no one to blame but yourselves for the party wipe....
70's/80's - 1st and 2nd edition adnd custom party sojourns = nightmares still to this day....
He sounds like a bad DM
@@shinybugg9156 refusal to update beyond 70's/80's Ad&d pure, unforgiving, pc punishment.
He still DM's the oldskool OG gygax way...
Always from a DM VS. PC's perspective.
Lol he has been trying to (unsuccessfully) explain THACO to me for.... ohhh 17ish years now....
🤯
Ah yes, "Doose ex Machinima"
I came close to a tpk last session when the party were fighting four ogres (not dnd btw). The group was split into 1 PC and 5 PCs but had arranged themselves in such a manner that only one ogre could attack each grouping so the 1 (the most experienced and capable fighter) dispatched one ogre by herself without taking any damage and the other 5 killed another ogre whilst taking a little bit of damage. In the meantime (this was happening in a mostly dark dungeon) one of the ogres had tried circling around to ambush the single PC and the fourth ogre had just grabbed a huge piece of stone rubble, as one character ran down some stairs in the dark, failed an easy check and tripped, ending up landing 6ish feet away from that ogre in pitch black darkness. The Ogre threw their stone but luckily missed (because it was dark) and at the end of the round he was surrounded by the group of five. However, through sheer luck on my side of the screen, he knocked out three of those combatants (one hit on the head each, the tank would’ve been outright dead from full HP hadn’t he worn a helmet) without taking any more damage within the next two turns and almost did the same to the fourth PC (druidic healer out of magic) before being dispatched by the roguish PC who had remained in the back throwing knives.
I ended the session with that, because it fit and I also needed to figure out if the last ogre, the boss, was going to abandon his lair or fight the weekend intruders. I am quite curious how they will handle him. They know there’s one more ogre, but they don’t know where and have no idea, if they’ve dealt any damage to him so far. I’d kinda like it if one PC died, but in the end the dice decide.
Anyhow, that was only somewhat related to the topic of the video, which was as always quite interesting.
Flashbacks to Bobby Ewing in the shower (yes old here) would support your “dream sequence” hesitation. I like the planned/intentional dream sequence. I would suggest including subtle inconsistencies (missing weapon, new spell or missing spell, different color of something) that will probably be ignored by the players in the excitement, written off to the DM being confused/forgetful or the players misremembering. After the fact, those clues will all make sense, “proving” it was planned all along.
I once did something similar, not with a dream, but the party was being impersonated by a group so well that they didn’t know they we not genuine. Weapons were different, the starting location was “on the road” instead of from their last location. The group meeting themselves was priceless!
Just like to add my two cents to this: In my opinion it is always a good idea to work as a team, even if one player made a bad decision. Last sunday one of my fellow players desided to attack a guarded carriage and nobody expected that. My character was not willing to pick that fight and i as a player was more than worried that we are outnumbered and outgunned. Still i joined the attack instead of sneaking away because i like to be a teamplayer. For me there is nothing worse than a player who refuses to participate in this kind of situation. All players should either help in the attack or try to defuse the situation. I don´t imply that a player/character should akt like a complete morron and die for someone who does not get that he´s acting like a madman but you need at least take some action to help your fellow player. If the player keeps doing thing after you try to stop him thats another storry and i would then gladly let him delve into his doom.
Redconning TPK´s with "dreams" or "visions" could feel somehow cheep because it will leave a bad taste in your mouth that the gm safed your asses with a deus ex machina.
I had a characte once i rly liked and the gm was aware of that. At some point in the story this character died and my gm offered to bring her back. But at this given time i could not see any logical reason how anybody would a) find her body in the swamp and b) would use a resurrection a total stranger instead of just taking her stuff and dump the body back
So i thanked my GM for the offer but rolled a new Charakter.
Sometimes the death of a character is the logical conclusion to his journey - even if it´s hard to led go.
My only issue with the "help even if you normally wouldn't" scenario is if the player hesitating is a paladin, given that depending on their path/deity of choice it could literally lead to them falling and losing their powers.
On the flip side, I don’t agree with making my character do something they wouldn’t because of another character’s stupidity. If they die, they die.
In my opinion, expecting everyone to try to help out or do something because one player did something is kinda selfish. Sometime’s characters aren’t always gonna protect/help everyone. Not all people are the same, after all.
I don’t think your opinion is bad at all mind you, just stating my point of view.
As a Fate GM, I use TPK not to kill but to change story route. Successfully winning a combat scenario allows the PCs to get what they intend, but losing (TPK) to a scenario means they get what they don't intend.
My friends were generally scared of losing a year old character, so I told them we won't have PC deaths. Now they try riskier things, and the narrative will continue regardless of the result. (My personal gripe is TPKs ending the campaign when I had more cool stuff to show the PCs)
A TPK is normally a reset of the party right? A serious PC failure. So I'll let everyone keep their characters, but maybe reset where they are, what they have, etc. No more money, or weapons, or you end up in a slave camp and there is a really long detour to get back onto the main journey. Or, this is the new main plot, etc.
I believe Fate also has a mechanic for surviving death encounters but taking on a "troubled aspect" such as arachnophobia if your team was wiped by giant spiders.
The two TPKs that I remember happening with my various groups were all just BAD luck with the dice, players rolling low and monsters rolling REALLY high, and not big important fights either usually mildly random ones! So we usually rolled back to a decent point and played again from there
I think the lessons people should learn from such are:
(1) Get the dice off the table. (Dice are to add spice to the game. - Not controlling it.)
(2) Reduce the amount of combat. (Fewer and faster combats.)
(3) Be less stupid in combat situations. (Fights are dangerous, act accordingly.)
"You could do it once with a party every ten years or so"
Or, roll a percentile. When everyone starts getting bummed about dying in this random event, give them a random chance for this all to just be a bad dream. Make it a dramatic roll. Also. The going to hell idea is beautiful. And I'm putting that in my box
Greek and roman mythology had a lot of tales of heroes going to the afterlife to rescue a loved one or family member.
Well you definitely shouldn't set out with that as your goal as a gm, but they should exist and they should be in games.
My dad is ADAMANTLY against PCs EVER dying! He started a campaign with a friend of his, the friend's wife, stepdaughter and a friend of his and they died pretty early in the adventure! They just made new characters and pretty much continued from there. I got to join for a couple of sessions but then had my job get in the way so I had to stop playing! Being an adult SUCKS sometimes!
@@JacksonOwex Isn't that what you do? Pick up with new characters?
In my opinion, you can have all those benefits without killing all the party. I think that character deaths are good, mainly in campaigns which have a dark atmosphere as mine do, but killing all the team can be too strong. I've sometimes killed players because they often take bad decisions or sometimes just because you sometimes have to remind that players can die and they have to be careful. An epic death of a character can be an epic story players will remember for a long time. However, killing all the team is, in my opinion, too much, unless you have saved them sometimes in the past and they're just so silly that you have to kill them. That can happen, and in that case, there's no other option
I love my NPCs. I once had a tag a long monk that I was playing in addition to the party for a couple sessions that saved the group just because the dice rolls said so. Was able to take the aggro of all three Giants, and with the help of patient defence take no damage from any of them allowing the party to gather themselves and take out the giants. I expected them to die, as a means of allowing them to escape, but instead they rallied behind my character, and overcame the odds. And my friends told me how awesome said npc was. they felt a real gratitude and appreciation to this character I had created to be a helpful guide for the start who instead turned into one of the groups closest allies.
My most recent tpk came when the party ran across a trap door labeled "Magic Weapons Armory! NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY!"
The door led to a portal that transported them into oblivion. They all walked through in spite of various tests that indicated that this was at least a one way trip. In hindsight, this trap was perhaps a little too perfect since they just assumed that it was a one way portal to a boss or something.
One post-TPK rescue I've used: the party is resurrected by a powerful evil creature or faction, one that is a rival or opponent to whatever evil the party has been fighting. They are offered continued existence, but in magical servitude to this evil group (but still on a mission to defeat the BBEG or whoever). When I did this, the party was amazingly motivated to escape this circumstance, which led to some fun side adventures and renewed party interest in the campaign.
My very first level 1 party was wiped out by goblins, clearly I am the best GM!
As a side note that group doesn’t let me GM for them anymore, but I found another party and am slightly less prone to murdering them
I’ve been DMing since the late 80s. Solid advice. TPKs happen. What happens after is just as important. Last TPK I did revealed that the players were all suffering under a curse that claimed their souls and brought them back to 1st level immediately after their first adventure. They had no memory of the prior adventures or xp, but all of them had unsettling dreams about the previous adventures and then they had to figure out the curse.
i will pull my punches if i dont have an out: so i made a system.
3 continues, non-refundable and you dont get new ones if we start a new campaign.
for literally any reason, if the party determines its in a fail state i can rewind time far enough so that the players get a second chance at the problem.
only ever had it used once: near the end of a medium large trap dungeon with a particularly nasty trap. someone died while preventing the ceiling from crushing everyone because the party had a misconception on how the puzzle worked. it was heroic, sure... but very unsatisfying (for many reasons actually).
having that half orc barely manage seperate the spinal column of the godkiller spawn with his greatsword at the end was much more preferable ending.
"Is it the GM's fault for making the monster too strong" *laughs in OSR*
I was mocked for my battles being too easy so I up the danger and after two pc died they ran away and said that my fights weren't all that bad considering the battle they just had
My personal opinion of total party kills is that if it happens because of bad rolls and choices a tpk is fine or if the party makes bad choices. Go with it if it happens but never force it to happen.
16:56 Just play Cthulhu, perfect training grounds for TPKs
It runs after me and catches me? How? I, a Tabaxi, with Wizard levels for haste, Monk, Rogue. Before it turns it's head I'm back in town.
The Heroic Sacrifice bit was actually what happened in our Starfinder campaign.
Except we flew into a Black Hole Reactor Core instead of the sun to destroy the multi-planet-big ultra fortress of evil because we didn't exactly do anything to prevent it.
I've done the dream sequence once, and I've DM'ed players that were just reckless and they died like every 3 sessions regularly, but in 25 years I've only gotten 1 true, everyone's dead TPK. I set my challenge rating like 2 levels over the PC's but typically my players are so cautious I kill one maybe every 2 years or so. I don't fudge roll, so when players die, I typically just ask out of character, "do you want me to do some sort of deus machina intervention", because in the end I prefer to have the players happy, and don't care who's alive or who's dead, or what's the internal narrative, We're just regular ass people playing a game, not plotting a tv show. So if they ever do go the save me route, which they rarely do, I'll make a compelling reason they made it. The only time I do not ask the players if they want an olive branch is when they were in Pvp... 'cause it's better one of you didn't make it anyways
Still watching, but why is having 1 or 2 people survive worse than a TPK?
Depend on how they survived.
I was a member of a gaming club where a TPK was named Hiroshima.
But if the GM did save one character (To avoid ending up on the Hiroshima list) then they ended up on the Nakasaki list instead.
In other words, it is worse in the case where it is due to the GM do something feeble to avoid what was obviously coming.
"It is a total TPK".... wait what?! I love how he catches himself messing up or it was just a fluke he did.
I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention the "everyone wakes up in a jail cell" or something. I've done that, but only cause it was bad guys that would have done that and they wanted to feed the adventurers to their dragon. They were all at 1 hp and had to escape on their own and be all stealthy trying to escape.
One of the best player deaths I've had was a player that time and time again Leroy Jenkins every battle. There were arms coming out of the walls and pillars with a huge demon at the end of the room. This player, an assassin type, runs in by himself to hit the demon once. He got grabbed and absolutely destroyed. The team tried to save him, but I had the demon choose to do a coup de grace instead of going for another player since it was a demon. That player had to make a new character and played differently from then on.
“It was all a dream” always feels cheap, unless you’ve done a lot with dreams, as you said. I’ve had the party rescued at the last moment before, that kinda works. Like they all go unconscious but then they wake up in the garrison and the town guard stormed in and saved the day. Whatever you do it feels like Deus Ex Machina.
Sometimes Deus Ex Machina is what is needed to get past something that sucks the fun out of the game. Everyone will shake their heads at how unrealistic it is, and then they will move on. And very quickly the unrealistic episode will fade into the past (or will have turned into something to laugh about) and everyone will be having fun with the campaign again. Use it sparingly, but don't afraid to use it when needed.
My ruling for the Deus Ex Machina situations is that anyone still rolling death saves has to finish rolling them. They don’t automatically stabilize. That way, some members of the party may well die, and the impact is felt, but the story can continue. I love when a character or two dies, but TPKs kind of suck
Im a player and we had just contacted our powerful patrons with our location so they could collect a person we had captured for them. A trap went off that set off a blasting jelly storage in the cellar which killed us all. Because we had contacted the patrons with our exact location they were able to get there in time to revive us. It was very stressful and we have been insane about checking for traps ever since
I have a time loop mechanic to cover everyone's ass and an in-universe reason for some metagaming.
Issue is that everyone will remember everything before during and after.
NPCs included so this forces careful thinking and planning on the PCs part.
Noone can ever convince me that you are not Shadiversity...
My players are usually too hard to tpk xD
Let god sort them out, ez
played a game of D+D we were in a cave and the thief (the DM's Wife) climbed up a ledge with a rope and hook the dm asked her do you leave the rope hanging or pull it up again? she pulls it up. got attacked by spiders paralyzed and killed. Of course none of us could climb up to save her and without the rope can't reach the exit. DM days well there is no food or water in cave so you all wonder aimlessly till you starve to death. My fighter did not even get 1 attack in the whole module. I Never went back
No one else had a grappling hook? There weren't rocks laying around that you could stack up and eventually get out? I'm sorry there should ALWAYS be SOMETHING that you can do to get out of a situation like that! I don't blame you for not playing with that group again!
What if the campaign begins with the players fighting a BBEG level villain and they die and the whole campaign is them fighting to get their mortal lives back?!
Is this one of those things that SOUNDS good but when IMPLEMENTED it is just a disaster?! Hmm...
The main problem I see with this is: Far too railroady.
But! I think it can be done, but it is complicated and - yes - have a high risk of ending as a disaster.
There is a campaign type with this concept. (I have forgotten the name for it)
The concept is the campaign starts out with the characters get taken out of their known world, to be put in an unknown world instead.
If it is done without the players knowing, then it is railroading.
It disconnects the characters from the world, making it a lot harder for the players to roleplay their characters.
Thus punishes cooperative roleplay-focused players, as they build their characters dependent on the world around them.
And awards lone-wolf / edge-lord players, as they already do not trust anyone and anything around them.
That sounds like the plot of the first part of Dragon Quest 6.
@@larsdahl5528 Yeah that sounds even more like Dragon Quest 6 lol.
As long as the story calls for it, they can be good. TPKing the party on a random encounter and a series of bad rolls is horseshit.
I've actually designed a game that's based around PC deaths you as a player have your own stat/skill sheet and each time you die you start out at lv1 regardless of the general party lv
But each time your soul rembers your previous lives so you get a small stats boost and 1 skill as a legacy skill
It creates an interesting new dynamic because well yes the new hero will be slightly stronger once he gets to catch up in lv until then the party is having to deal with keeping him alive at the same time
So 5 pc's all at lv 10 and one dies so instead of fighting a cr 10 battle it is now a cr8 battle because average lv is now 8 and well 4 lv10 and 1 lv1 can probably handle it is the lv1 is not stupid or very unlikely
We once had a player caused TPK. The player rolled really badly in Warhammer 40K version of a sanity check, went paranoid and blew up the whole party (she was the demolition expert). The rest of us, including the GM, just kind of sat there staring at her a bit helplessly.... (She'd turned off her comm device and refused to believe any of us were real). I mean... it was valid but there went 8 months of game play :P
I've seen a few TPK's in my time. Most recent TPK I've experienced, the GM retconned a pretty decently satisfyingly TPK with a player majority vote. We fought our main target, he randomly exploded on death and everyone dropped to 0 and died from super unfortunate death saves. I decided to have my character die and it kinda just was bland, but at least my old character will come back as a rival of sorts.
I tend to be hyper critical on myself when something bad happens on both sides of the screen, if only to turn into a heatsink. Reviewing your actions is good, but try not to be too hard on yourself especially when those actions require impractical levels of clairvoyance.
I've seen alot of personal improvement from character deaths, TPK's and sudden campaign ends that I've committed or experienced, and it's nice to have the disappointment and unsatisfactory outcomes and personal feelings be deemed natural, rather than a mark of failure.
Also, I'm pretty sure that airborne poison could be avoided with any one of the myriad of wind spells, but that's not a conversation for here.
Thank you for reading my comment, I hope it was useful.
I once ran Lost Mine as an intro to Curse of Strahd. During the Venomfang fight we had a TPK but I pulled some punches and allowed some of the party to survive. It ended up feeling cheap to everyone and left us all dissatisfied.
Having watched this video and with hindsight I should've just had them die, really played up the scene and done a colorful "outro" and then ended the session with them awakening in the Mists.
I learned a lot from that campaign, even if it wasn't the greatest game, and sometimes I think that's all that you can do is just to try to learn from it and move forward.
TPK are needed.
My very first TPK was in a Fight back in D&D 3.5. Our team. A Dwarven Fighter, a Half-Elf Ranger, a Human Rogue, Elven Psionic fought a Villain that obtained a mighty relic called Tooth of Tarrasque wich gave him insanely Strenght after he stabbed himself with it. So instead of fleeing from him, we tried to stop him and got absolutely murdered in 5 Rounds. Our Fighter dropped on the first Attacks, me the Ranger dropped after i took the hit for our Elven Psionic and the Rogue was the only one trying to run off but got oneshotted in the fifth Round after the Villain threw a Spear shaped Rock at him wich impaled him due to a critical hit. We learned at that day, sometimes we have to run from fights and wait for the best time to strike back
i would literally kill to be in a tpk. too many gentle dms... too much fudging.
I have literally tried to get tpk. "there's a great big giant demon over there that just appeared out of the graveyard let's charge him!"
And my character who was at the front didn't even die... Or drop on conscience I even gave a speech in character about dying for a noble cause.
As a side effect my character became more reckless in his pursuit of dangerous things which should be fought and defending against them was worth while caused to sacrifice his life for.
@@avi1enkin I apologize for this: unconscious*
@@avi1enkin I'm sorry, but that sounds like a kind of dick move? How did your co-players feel about you provoking a TPK?
@@rootyful i mean, if the other players didn't want to die, they could have just. run away? if they lacked the initiative to do so, then that's on them, not the GM or the instigator.
was in a campaign where every time a character was about to die the GM would yeet a DMPC from fucking nowhere to save us. it was a different one every time and i swear they where all different levels of self insert. one was a kitsune hellknight with purple hair... the only time it is acceptable for a hellknight to have an unnatural hair color is if they are a gnome and that is because crazy colors are their natural hair color. it was after that DMPC that i left the campaign. i love kitsune, and think hellknights are cool but when one 13 levels higher than me just materializes on top of an enemy who is about to murder my character and 1 shots the bad guy and then shoves a healing potion down my throat before leaving as quickly as they arrived thats way past the line i drew- in fact it completely disregards it.
what ha happen was...
my level 5ish oread towershield fighter in full plate (had like 5 feet of movement but had so much AC 10/10 would play again), and 2 other PCs played by newer TTRPG players, a ranger, and i think a sorcerer against a surprise blood golem (my character found it while looking into a murder). the ranger was examining the pig pen when combat started, and when the sorcerers turn rolled around they dropped a fireball on me (i told them to because i knew i could tank it, and i didnt know the thing i was fighting was a golem) sure enough i barely tank the hit, the golem is still standing, golem hits and downs me, and then the GM describes this character just appearing out of the shadows in full hellknight plate slicing the golem in 2 with a scythe, and then this mary sue shoving a healing pot in my characters mouth... it denied the ranger a chance to shine (because im sure they had healing spells, and they are great at martial combat), and prevented the sorcerer from finding a new solution to the problem. and most egregious of all, it denied me the slim chance to roll a new character (love making characters for pathfinder)
i think literally the only time i may be fine with the occasional Deus ex machina moment is if it was a custom setting where chosen champions are saved by ghosts of the past or something.
>players fly into the sun
>fade to black, i guess that campaign is over
>new campaign
>years of play, the heroes defeat the dragon and save the princess
>at the return party the king says "you have to wake up"
>what?
>"you have to wake up and destroy Megacorp"
>players wake up in the ship hurtling towards the sun, escape pod alert blasting over the speakers
GM: Rigged Encounter TPK
PCs: "sad of dying"
GM, *Smiles and shows the Descent into Avernus Campaign* : JK You wake up in Baator, now get out of hell.
PCs: *Happy Noises*
Great analysis- hoping my PCs defeat Orcus, but..
Love your content! You're the best! This is my obligatory content to improve your results in the TH-cam algorithm. :)
I've never had a FULL TPK, but I had several PK's in our big game that really hurt (but they were justified, if frustrating). Our really amazing GM had long since told us, "I'm not TRYING to kill the players, especially in random encounters, but I'm not going to stop you from dying if you really fuck up".
Watching this a half hour before a game picking up from where the GM in the previous session had set utterly impossible odds upon us. Two players are already down, they cannot be rescued in order to flee. If I try to rescue them, I go down. If I flee myself, the other players are completely fucked. My character is the only one still standing, and still able to move, but even that ability is severely constrained. I've had all week to think about it and still don't have a clue what to do. Do I sacrifice myself on the altar of futility?
My party is much more of a Leverage crew in their mission statement and approach to situation. Only 1 character as muscle w the rest having different specializations, but as adventurers they're all CAPABLE of fighting.
But anyway we dodged a BIG blss through wits and deception and some minor explosives, but one day we wanted a noncanon one shot and did a "what if" boss fight for if the baddie caught onto us... It went into a near tpk w only 2 of us left at 1 hp. This made us feel extra glad in the Smoke And Mirrors approach we did take with it in actual canon-campaign.
I don't know where this Kill came from. it seems to be an American thing. Back in the day we English always used to refer to such an incident as a Total Party Wipeout.
15:30 Unquestionably the best way to deal with it.
However, dates align for my nieces' mini party of two player characters far too rarely, so I just simply "quicksave" for them before battles. Inelegant, but I'm a CRPG player first and foremost, so it doesn't bother me too much. (No redos for dialog, though.)
So what about just saying 'alright, let's roll it back and go again.'
I know it kills a lot of surprise, but that doesn't mean it kills the drama and suspense. I think this is a lot better than just 'it was a dream' and allows players to keep their beloved characters.
But maybe only allow it once. Instil the Fear of Death and let them know that they're not invincible, just lucky.
Then we are over in the category: Retconning.
It always leaves a bad feeling of being too unrealistic.
And in a few situations, it can reveal poor GM quality.
@@larsdahl5528 eh an occasional retcon isn't bad as long as it doesn't become a crutch the DM uses to not have to worry about encounter balancing.
It really just depends on your group. If you're hard core gamers who like gritty realism and full immersion, then don't.
If you're a bunch of goofy, nerdy friends, having fun on the weekends, then absolutely. That's the category my group falls into.
As a GM I never know who to target with my monsters. Not every monster is super stupid and just attacks whatever is right in front of them. And many monsters do hunt to eat. So it's really questionable if I DON'T devour a downed player. Why wouldn't the monster just kill one player, eat it, and run away from the spell slinging wizard into the underbrush? Why woulnd't the monster rush towards the marksman first and stomp them? It's hard to come up with reasons why monsters seemingly fight "fair". How can I make encounters challenging to diffrent classes without sacrificing believability?
I've DM'd for groups ranging from 2 to 10, mostly fairly successfully. I can't say I've done a TPK. But most of the gains you reference, I think I've gained by dropping the occasional PC. The Leroy Jenkins player is often the one most likely to cause a TPK, and the cautious Rogue that stays in the shadows is far less likely to "need to learn a lesson." As such, simply not pulling punches, and let the Leroy Jenkins guy impale himself on the plainly visible dangers serves pretty well.
I've even had parties vote to not resurrect the character, as his existence puts the rest of the party in danger.
THAT is a helluva lesson...
Apart from back in the late 70's when we were kids and didn't understand the game properly and we TPK'd every session... they can only happen in my games through a pretty much dedicated run of dumbass decisions and I honestly can't remember having one in the past decade.
Apart from the "Special Ones".
People say that "railroading" and forcing a deliberate TPK are both bad things for a DM to do.
I did both at the same time and my players considered it one of the best adventures they ever played.
My campaigns are pretty plot literate, and heavy on the narrative. Lots of linear threads and goals broken down into "Books" or "Volumes" or whatever someone wants to call them. Between each major plot line I throw in a couple of things:
1) a couple of weeks of free time for the players to chase any ideas they may want to follow up on,
and
2) occasional "Cut Scenes"... basically one shots where they play other characters that I have prepared, going on a mission that may be involved in the overall plot but outside their immediate impact. (These can also provide campaign literate "back up" PCs. So, should one of the main PCs die, they can skip to one of the ones they've already played within the campaign... excellent way to avoid the "So... why are we doing all this" crap of integrating a new party member.)
One such cut scene involved them playing a group of spies taking a secret document through enemy lines and delivering it to a military commander... fairly standard fayre.
The campaign itself was about the players' homeland defending against an invading force that had failed to conquer them a hundred or so years before and were back to finish the job... under new ownership...
I pushed them through a very specific route, and since they were all rogues and not particularly keen on fighting military units, this was fairly easy. One by one they died in the castle grounds and the last one fell on a stone staircase just yards from the gateway that would have led to his escape and success in his mission.
It was only toward the end of the session, that one of the players started to realise that the map looked familiar... and when the last guy died on the stairs... he realised that it was EXACTLY in the position in a very similar (though badly damaged and ruined after 100 years) skeleton in a very similar castle that they had searched weeks before in order to find... "the lost scroll"... I'd just aged the map significantly, and placed it the opposite way round. all the PCs had died exactly where the ancient remains had been found and it was only when I described how the last body was laying that the rest of them suddenly worked it out.
The "cut scene" was taking place a hundred years earlier during the OTHER war, and it was basically just a bit of flavour to show them what had led to their previous adventure. The unexpected upshot of this was that the players seemed to become even more invested in the overall campaign goal.
Unless you are a novice... IF you are allowing TPK's to happen on Random Encounters with no back up plan... you are no longer a "GM;" great or otherwise. You are a "DM" and that doesn't stand for Dungeon Master... you are merely a "Dice Monitor." Here's a box for your stuff, hand in your ID at reception.
Well my party just slapped a ton of orcs in the face back to back on two mathematically deadly encounters. The party was even badly split on the second one. Adventurers are pretty hardy as long as you don't supply them with one-shot-kill levels of damage and don't 'optimize' your mob attacks, per-se
(I literally had the orc warboss tell his minions to drop attacking the fighter who was almost dead to get that 'clanker' who landed a crit with a blowdart and I ruled that the dart basically waxed one of his eyeballs and he's really angry about that)
I've had 2 TPKs - First was in my early years of DMing. The group lost in a narrative battle against the BBEG's second-in-command. The group nearly won, but in the end, everybody died. It turned out to be an unsatisfying end, however, as everyone was getting into the meat and potatoes of the campaign. I learned my lesson that day. Cut to a few weeks ago; my group are tricked into summoning Orcus. The Demon Lord, in all his undead glory, utterly kills the group. However, as they are raised as undead to serve in his army, their deities interject and prevent Orcus from claiming their champions. The 2nd part of the 3 part campaign ended with a narrative TPK, and the group loved it.
As a GM you can fudge the rules to save the players in a really bad situation, but there is a LIMIT to how much you can do it; if a player makes a character who acts like they have no sense of self-preservation AND they refuse to learn from experiences within the campaign with other PCs not doing anything about it, then eventually this will lead to a TPK.
I recently started a scenario (not a campaign, my players are not experienced enough for that and I am uncertain if they are commited to the prospect) where one of them plays a chaotic neutral druid... to the point that she acts completely random, shows virtually no respect, has no restrain (and she is a druid, so her Wisdom is decent).
On the last session this already led to a potential TPK scenario when the party teamed up with a powerful sorcerer to raid a tower. Said sorcerer hinted at a possible trap in the final room and one of the PCs tried pushing the sorcerer in. This backfired and I had a chance to show the players just how much more powerful the sorcerer is then they are (this is early stage of the scenario, they just got to level 2 and the sorcerer was of waaaaaaaaaaaaaay higher rank). They were virtually shown that if the sorcerer wished, he could kill them all with little trouble.
During that little incident the chaotic druid (who multiclassed to rogue) tried to pickpocket the sorcerer and failed. Once the tower was cleared, the sorcerer went on to fulfill the bargain struck between the party and himself: he wanted only a ring and a single book from the place; the rest of the loot was for the party to take. Still the druid/rogue pickpocketed his book and when the sorcerer noted it was gone he - logically - turned to her as she already tried to steal from him once.
He demanded to get his book back having a spell aimed at the thief, but she tried bluffing her way out. The check was a fail and I SPECIFICALLY did something I have not done in roughly 15 years of DMing: I allowed my players to see me roll damage for the fireball the sorcerer cast just to show them how RIDICULOUSLY outclassed they were. The druid/rogue SHOULD'VE been incinerated ENTIRELY at that point (no ressurection), but I allowed a chance to save her (not only was she dead according to the rules, but even if we were to accept that she fell uncoiscious, the time-frame would make it so she was not stabilized in time). I can't even being to list the number of "adjustments" I made just to allow saving her to succeed (I had to "level-up" another NPC who was with their party just to give him access to a teleportation spell which I also had to fudge to extend its distance, had to allow the other PCs to talk the sorcerer down despite the fact that - given sorcerer's personality - he would not have calmed down by that point... nearly every rule in the book was tossed out for that).
She was taken to the temple, revived and clearly her character learned NOTHING.
Given what was said at the end of the session, I'm fairly certain they are going to see the local crimelord (who they already antagonized somewhat and were told DIRECTLY they should not make their enemy) and despite two warning I will provide I sense they will still force my hand to have the crimelord kill them. They cannot win that fight, but if you as a GM will allow the players to get away with everything, there really isn't a point to the story.
And - if it comes to the above - the TPK won't be glorious. They will all just die, because they cannot except that sometimes THEY need to bend the knee.
In a Fallout-inspired game, we experienced a TPK after failing to disarm a live nuclear warhead that was primed to explode after a minute. Everyone was floored when the DM told us that no, you didn't make it, all of you guys aren't ghouls now. You're radioactive dust. Gone.
What was really a surprise was the circumstances leading up to it. I was the only person in the party with the Explosives, Science, and Repair skills leveled high enough to mess with it, making me the only qualified person to take a stab at disarming the thing. The DM didn't even set the difficulty checks remarkably high; nobody expected me to roll three 1's in a row. When the DM sets the stakes that high, and the dice gods are pulling out every stop to make the TPK happen, you kind of have to go through with it. It felt completely unfair at the time, but whatever. My table was no stranger to what one of the other players could only describe as "Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit", so we eventually got over it. One player did quit playing TTRPGs for over a year as a result, however. It really stung.
Had a TPK literally my first session as a DM. I'm running the lost mine of Phandelver right now as my first game, and I originally had 3 of my friends as players (now 5) and the 3 goblins that ambushed the characters (which I reduced from 4 goblins btw) just... completely wiped them out. I told them they woke up to find their stuff stolen, with the exception of one player who in one short encounter decided she did NOT want to be a wizard and got to switch her next character to a fighter.
I've found another good way to prevent a TPK is have one or more of the PCs wake up finding themselves imprisoned by the enemies, clinging to life, perhaps being held for ransom or as a bargaining chip in a prisoner exchange with the PCs' patrons/faction. Obviously, this only works in limited circumstance (a PC who was incinerated by a dragon or eaten by sharks probably isn't "waking up from a coma" later on), but in many cases it's believable that at least one of the characters could have survived and get a second chance to escape and/or raise their party. Since they will certainly have been stripped of their possessions and possibly permanently maimed/disabled, this has the advantage of penalizing them mechanically while still giving the story a chance to continue if you and the players really want to carry on with those characters. The PC's are powerful people, after all (especially if you've been running this campaign for years), and powerful people are much more valuable alive than dead. Or if they aren't so powerful, perhaps the enemies view them as valuable slave labor, if that's a paradigm you're willing to run in your game.
The disadvantage to this strategy is that it forces you to chose between sidelining the plot you actually want to be running in favor of a prison break or prisoner exchange adventure, or simply skipping over all that which is a bit less fulfilling. But it is a good option if you don't want to do something cheesy/cliche like a "dream sequence," or blatantly gamey like "your characters get resurrected by the local church and they took 20k gold from you to pay for it."
Tpk’d my party twice during Tomb of Annihilation.
Both were planned to almost certainly be a TPK (but could have been won with amazing play or dice rolls).
First they entered a temple and found themselves facing Acererak, under levelled for the encounter. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but was very obvious in hindsight - they were being “inserted” into historical events in a dream sequence. Used it to finally reveal who the big bad was, as well as put the fear in them.
When they finally faced Acererak he tpk’d them again. This time they were levelled enough, but I used a modified, proper, spell list for him, as his spell list is terrible, and played him as an almost eternal, genius, lich, pulling out all the stops and holding nothing back. It was the “sacrifice yourself to overcome the great evil” moment.
Again, I had planned for it. They were resurrected by the Spirit of Ubtoa, to find 6 months had passed, and the campaign continued, with them now being the agent of Ubtoa to fully restore Chult.
At some point in a future, different, campaign I will have the same players go up against Acererak again…
In my campaign the players are confronted with a sea hag. I have made her a kind of like Ursela from the little mermaid, so this hag makes "deals". In the campaign a NPC asked the party to kill this hag in return for treasure. THe NPC made very clear that just "running in" will definitely get them killed and they should make a plan. The party made a plan which allowed them to stealthly go into this carvern where the hag was hiding. THe NPC even came along to help them on this quest, cause I knew that it could turn ugly. I told them there were 5 fomorians in the cavern so it was very clear to NOT ATTACK! eventually the 5 person lvl 5 party decided to give up on the whole "stealth" bit and thought it would be a good idea to take on these fomorians... I decided I would forget about 2 of them after intiative was rolled, so there would be only 3 formorians left. (Only one girl in my party noticed I did that...) then I took my NPC and gave her a heroic final standing; luring 2 of the fomorians away while telling the party to run. *fly you fools* even then the party just continued to attack the last fomorian and carrion crawlers and did nothing whatsoever to accomplish their goal namely going up the stairs where its save.... Time ran out so we stopped the session there.... I know its about my players having a good time, but I'm not having fun like this... I literally gave my players 6 "outs" and the just kept on making dumb choices.... Do you have any tips on what I should do?
I have a general rule in my games. "I won't try to kill your characters, but I won't give you plot armor if you decide to make a dumb decision." I also give them warning, both in AND out of game, if what they are doing is a really bad idea. If we take the idea of the party dying to a random encounter because they decided not to take weapons, I'll have different NPC's tell them that they should bring stuff cause of various rumors they've heard or various encounters they had nearly escaped from. I once had a TPK happen due to a boss monster where the major driving force before the fight was that if they had a certain weapon (which they had all the resources in the world to find) it would make the fight extremely easy. Instead they decided "We've got this" despite having, I kid you not, 12 NPC's and 4 out of game warnings that this would go poorly, the last one literally stating "This creature will kill you if you don't get the weapon, that's the point of the mission". Most of the players were like "fair, you did warn us. It was still really fun though!" and then this one guy stood up and said "Not cool trying to kill out characters dude." I looked him dead in the eye "I gave you over a dozen warnings, the last of which I literally told you that you would die without the weapon. I don't like that we TPK'd either, but I'm not going to hand you plot armor cause you made a stupid choice. If you don't like it you're more than free to leave, doors right over there. Now if you'll excuse me, we've got new characters to roll."
I wrote and ran a module for a fantasy LARP I belonged to that led to a very unintended TPK.
The module was scaled to be underpowered according to the level of any party that took it on and the combat was geared to be fairly light and quick. The goal was for the players to focus on investigating and finding clues to a strange bit of experimental sorcery that was attempted "offstage" prior to the module. It was the information-gathering prelude to a story arc.
The players all ranged from experienced to storied veterans and they outnumbered their adversaries, who were also no match for them in terms of combat or magical capacity.
*Two critical issues led to the TPK:* The players did not work as a group. They did not heal a pivotal, yet easily dealt with debuff on their lead warrior, a paladin.
Instead of using teamwork, the players scattered to chase individual hobgoblins around. When the paladin was hit with a spell that caused in-game blindness (shut your eyes, no fighting allowed), the players did not "waste the power" to heal the malady. Rather than fix the problem, they relied on the paladin's blind fighting skill--which allowed him to open his eyes and engage in limited combat (he could not move around to attack; enemies had to approach him). In addition to the mages in the group who had healing, the paladin could have even healed himself of this at any time.
There was an unfortunate trend among some players to leave in-game debuffs/injuries untreated if they did not deem the issue "significant" or if they thought they could compensate.
In this case, the party got worn down and picked off one at a time.
I was sick to my stomach watching this. I kept screaming in my head, "WHAT ARE THEY DOING?" But I let it play out to its finality.
Most of the party was able to resurrect per the LARP's mechanics; the paladin had no resurrections left though.
As this all went down, an in-game funeral was already being held for another character who previously met his end in-game. Needless to say, emotions were a bit raw when they learned they had to plan another in-game funeral...
I had a (practical) TPK last week...
One character survived by surrendering (now has a Geas to help their foe), and another character made their Death Saves.
The other 3 PCs, and their NPC ally, are all dead....
I just set up a campaign where lvl 1 characters are off to go fight a Druidic Ent that has been corrupted and has been using monsterized animals to try to"Purge" the world from the Human plauge. This will lead to a true BBEG for the world but I worry that my players might just get themselves killed. It's my first campaign that I've actually put thought into that we're playing. I hope that it goes well, I think I'm going to use tips from other videos to provide more fun for my players
The mongols couldn't invade Japan because they
*DIED IN A TORNADO*
You could easily create an entirely new narrative out of a TPK for higher level players. Say your players die to the BBEG near the end of a campaign. Those players become immortalized heroes in that world. They awaken 50-100 years later as they're resurrected to fight again through some ancient magic item that took decades to find. In that time, the same BBEG has become even stronger, or perhaps there is another evil plaguing the world and the people of the future don't know what to do anymore. The players must finish what they set off to do, albeit with everyone they know dead or aged significantly. You could have several quests just putting together loose ends. What happened to that Dwarf the party took a liking to? Is she still alive? How about that tavern run by a certain loyal family? Maybe they have presents in store, or could offer help in some other way like information. Tons of possibilities. Plus, most of the armor and weapons they were using probably rusted, or were sold off. It's an opportunity to be plentiful with the loot as these might be 12th level characters starting out fresh again with no wealth or equipment. Getting that back could be an entire adventure by itself.
I really prefer to call them TPLs, total party losses. Kill if it suits the narrative, but there are often better consequences than death, even ones the PCs might consider worse than _just_ dying. Raze their home town. Kidnap their favourite NPC. Put the PCs in prison for ten long years while their home is conquered.
That said, I do prefer more narrative games, and TPKs work well in wargaming.
My best TPK was my party fighting through guards to a wizard who was channeling. The second he stopped channeling everyone makes a reflex check, everyone fails. A look of fear crosses his face as he rapidly disintegrates blasting them all with 24d6 and propelling them all back 15 feet as the magic contained within his body is catastrophically released in a single moment.
That may seem extreme but they were so used to charge in, hack and slash. Didnt even bother talking to the wizard, just assumed he was evil and bang: reroll time.
I had a recent TPK, but I had the bad guys take the party captive. The party was defending a position and one of the party had already been stated to have a unique physiology reminiscent of something relevant to the defenders' cult. The invaders decided to take the party hostage to determine the exact connection between the unique party member and the invaders' nemeses.
EDIT FOR CLARITY: The invaders and defenders were both goblinoid tribes, so the presence of humanoids in the battle at all were already strange to the invaders, let alone the ticking clockwork in one of them.
I used a lot of prophetic dreams through an NPC the party rescued and took care of. They were always vague, but after the first few things related to dreams happened and the players (way later) connected the dots, suddenly they went over everything this little girl said WITH SUCH VIGOR!
It was all set up to be memories of a destroyed timeline. The final BBEG they were going to face off against was one that in a different timeline won against the party. I decided that the wizard of the party would've spent his entire lifetime researching time magic and eventually changed some key events to give the CURRENT party a better chance at defeating this entity.
Regretfully the game ended due to a falling out with some players before I could get to the final confrontation, but it's still been one of my longest running games with some of the coolest plot points I made imo.
I've still never been allowed to run another Star wars d20 campeign again. Between a tough final encounter, the bounty hunter betraying the party, and the Empire catching up, complete TPK. I thought it was thematically interesting, my wife (the bounty hunter) enjoyed her end, and her part in the end, but the players otherwise hated me. Note however, it was their own fault/decisions that caused it. My wife played a bounty hunter very accurate...the empire offered a giant payday...after she contacted them and bartered for it. Half of the party decided to run from the final boss, leaving the two Jedi all alone against 2 ancient sith - not a good idea. One of the runners, a scoundrel played by my brother-in-law killed the bounty hunter, just before the rest of them were vaporized by the empire who had NO intention of letting any escape, or paying the bounty hunter. As I said, I thought it was fun 😂
I literally can't comprehend why anyone finds value in a meaningless TPK, do you guys just have infinite free time to start adventures over or not care about your characters at all?